Mel Klie is here! We have been to some wacky places so far. I will outline the main events from recent days.

The Church

There is a bar that is quite popular with the expat crowd called the Church. I think it used to be in a church but has since moved to some theatre style building. It is only open on Sunday afternoons. I thought is was an interesting concept but it seemed like a waste of the nice weather on a Sunday afternoon. There were a few acts and a lot of booze and it all finished up by four in the afternoon. They played lots of popular tunes that everyone enjoyed dancing too. There were a lot of people in costumes or with their national flag painted on their faces. The acts included a regurgitater, an MC who sang some songs with us all and a fire eating stripper. I think it would be better if it were held at night but we still had fun.

Glastonbury

We just got back tonight from Glastonbury 2008. We were dirty tired people when we got back and are much happier now that we have had showers. I haven't been that filthy for a long time. Most of the problem was that we thought we could wear crocs. We did this until it started seriously raining. The mud was up past our ankles and eventually the crocs were sucked in to the mud and we had to proceed in bare feet until rubber boots were purchased. I shudder when I think about that. Mel wanted to bring pillows for the tent but they got soaked before we even got the tent set up. So in an even more grubby turn of events, we used that pillow to wipe our feet on before entering the tent. Over all, the shows were really good and I saw several really good bands and a bunch of bands I had never heard of. I also met a lot of quality people and had a few drinks.

Canada Day in Trafalgar Square

We went down to Trafalgar Square for the London Canada Day celebrations. There was a surprising amount of Canadians gathered in central London for a fairly lame party. There was a very boring celtic style band from the Yukon and a Tim Hortens set up. There was also a Bison Burger stand. I just love stereotypes, don't you? There was a near by Canadian pub but it was absolutely packed. We ended up going to a nice Mexican place run by South Africans. It was cool that something was done to mark the occasion though.

This is one of the many fields of tents. It is a big free for all. Any spot where you can put a tent down is good. Of course there are better places than others, namely beside the toilets.

This is the muck that we walked through everywhere we went for two days.

Shortly before the crocs bit the dust (or mud in this case). Good thing I hate crocs to begin with and was happy to throw them out. Mel Picked them out. Thank you for choosing white.

As with most camping related festivals, this was run by hippy activists. The main players were Green Peace, Water Aid, and Oxfam. This is a piece from one of the ecological living areas. This house has an edible roof and costs 300 pounds.

Because there were about 175 000 people there, people dressed in all sorts of costumes to making them selves more visible to the people they were travelling with. Also carrying a flag on a high pole was popular. Dressing in drag was quit popular but these "ladies" were moving to quickly to do them justice in this photo.

One of the controversial figures this year was JayZ. Usually this is a festival for guitar bands so everyone thought it was a poor choice to have him headline this year. But I went and I thought it was really good. This is a picture of him with my favourite group Hot Chip. He did a quick number with them before doing his own set an hour or so later. I really loved it. I thought he was really well received and I was surprised that I knew almost all the songs.